


my kingdom (for someone to ride with)

by bunnypirate (evil_bunny_king), evil_bunny_king



Series: Salt Water [4]
Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon-Typical Violence, Claudeleth ride or die, F/M, Fire Emblem: Three Houses Blue Lions Route, Hurt/Comfort, Political Prisoners, Slow Burn, murder couple, with extra burning
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-01-13
Updated: 2021-01-24
Packaged: 2021-02-27 07:28:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 6,459
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22233322
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/evil_bunny_king/pseuds/bunnypirate, https://archiveofourown.org/users/evil_bunny_king/pseuds/evil_bunny_king
Summary: "What will you do now?” Claude asks.He licks his chapped lips, gaze flicking over her features, and then he smiles. His pulse beats against the knife at his throat.--Gronder Field, Azure Moon. Time takes a slightly different turn.
Relationships: My Unit | Byleth/Claude von Riegan
Series: Salt Water [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1747756
Comments: 37
Kudos: 131





	1. Blood of the Eagle and the Lion

**Author's Note:**

> So the wonderful anam_writes gave the prompt 'tactical-disagreements" and this beautiful monster of a Blue Lion AU erupted.
> 
> Heads-up that I am utter claudeleth trash and that will very quickly become obvious (I hope??)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> At Gronder's field five years into the great war, the fallout goes a little differently than planned.
> 
> Byleth gains victory for the Kingdom of Faerghus, and a hard-won chance at repelling the Empire.
> 
> She gains: Claude.

Gronder, the second time.

The empire holds the high ground, the alliance ringing the eastern horizon. She fights and she struggles and she still watches as the Kingdom army breaks apart between them, like a ship caught between waves, and so with blood in her mouth she pulls time apart to try again.

_-the battle cry of the Alliance's charge as it smashed through their western flank, the air thick with the copper static of magic and fire-_

_-the expression on Lysithea's face as she'd stalked through the oilsmoke, determination mastering pain and a fear that Byleth recognises from midnight walks through the monastery, between the library and the kitchens, when a younger girl wound her fingers into her sleeve-_

She finds her feet with a lurch of seasickness and the battle resumes, new voices overlaying the old and blurring until she can't distinguish them anymore.

Now the Alliance banners remain atop the ridgeline, watching, waiting, and Byleth leads Sylvain, Felix and her own companies over the bridge and into the woods, towards the Alliance encampment.

She hears it when the Kingdom makes it into the central fortification. Petra retreats and trips the trap behind her and the kegs stacked around the ballista explode, splattering burning oil across the battlefield.

The force of it shudders the air, shaking the leaves from the trees. She glimpses Ashe banking hard above her, wheeling away with the remnants of his battalion before the smoke plumes blank out the sky. One of the wyverns is burning, liquid fire splattered up its side and licking towards its rider and she hears its hoarse scream as it writhes in midair and tumbles into the forest. The crash is consumed by the roar of the fire. Her pulse trips in her throat.

(The first time, Dimitri and Dedue had been caught in the blast. She'd been close enough to see the flames engulf them, to see Dimitri screaming like a beast, throwing his spear like a javelin with the raw, melting mess of his hands-)

She'd sent Dimitri via the river, this time. Flank alongside the airborne attack. Cave their defences. **Do not** hold the central position. 

There's no more time to wonder if it worked, though. She waves a quick signal to her squad of wyvern riders perched in the surrounding trees - get up, get above the smoke before it sinks over the forest; regroup with Sylvain's cavalry - and they ascend with a cracking of branches and clipped wingbeats. She retreats to her horse, tied to a tree at the edge of the clearing, following in suit. The smoke descends like a fog as she works the loose knot, and for a moment it's almost silent.

And then there's a shout above - the clang of metal on armour; a wyvern's shriek, and then the explosion of a skirmish quickly wheels apart and away, hidden behind the haze.

She leaves her horse and tightens her grip on her gauntlets as she scans the thick of the smoke, trying for sky.

The wind changes and she glimpses a sweep of movement-

A glowing arrow punches through. She glances it off her gauntlet and it still hits with enough force to dent, caving the steel in towards her knuckles. She rips them off with a grimace and draws the Sword of the Creator instead. It stirs in her hands, a twitching, living thing.

His name escapes her as the edge of a wyvern's wing grazes through the smoke, circling for another pass. Her horse whinnies and prances away from her, rolling its eyes to follow the movement.

"Claude."

He'd chosen his moment, as he had before.

Another arrow - this time she catches it with the toothed edge of the blade and the sparks startle across her vision, burning into her sight. She ducks back towards the trees, pressing herself against the trunk of a pine. These are warning shots - enough to test her defences, probe for weakness; if anything, she thinks, he's too curious to try to end it first. She wonders how she knows that. There's sap on her fingers, needles breaking in her hair. The smell is thick in her throat as she twists closer to the bark and weighs the distance to her horse against the risk, gambling on a run for it.

Failnaught glows a sullen ember as Claude’s wyvern drops into the opposite side of the clearing, landing with a final beat of its leathered wings and a shudder of earth and it's what it takes for her horse to rear back and bolt away into the forest, taking her options away with it.

The wyvern snorts, twisting its great neck after it and Claude trains a new arrow in her direction. He’s older and grander than she remembers, but he smiles a familiar smile. 

“Professor," he calls, his voice light, as if they're not at war. The clamour continues above, something plummeting through the trees to her right, landing heavy and still. "Why aren't you with your soldiers? Never get the hang of flying?"

She adjusts her grip on the Sword of the Creator and feels the weight of the blade - the coiled whip of it, the flexing joints. She steps back towards the clearing and Claude's eyes narrow as she emerges from the trees, the arrow's angle correcting. But he doesn’t fire; she’d known he wouldn’t.

"You really are unchanged," he murmurs, his voice so low it could almost be to himself. And then he tilts his head and cocks an eyebrow, still keeping the aimed bowstring taut. "I suppose I would be as well, if I'd slept through half a decade."

She feels herself start to smile and stops at the edge of the clearing, stance light, sword raised. She’s not surprised he knows. It’s not a secret.

“A lot has changed,” she says, instead, and he smiles again.

“An understatement, as always.”

She makes no inclination to approach further and so he eases the draw of his bow, allowing the arrowhead to lower, his fingers remaining around the arrow’s fletch. He looks at her. His gaze tracks from the strength of her stance to her clothes, her hands, lingering on her face and she feels-

Something unsettled stirs in her chest. Something quiet, and pained, and she sees a similar emotion flicker across his features before it's tucked away again.

"The Kingdom in ruins, the Empire rampant; your students all grown up. You’ve missed a lot, professor." His voice changes on her old title. His expression doesn't. "I have to ask, though: why follow a mad prince?"

She lets the jibe roll over her without purchase. "The Kingdom needs him. And the Empire needs to be stopped."

Claude’s mouth twists and he huffs a laugh. "Dimitri wants Edelgard’s head - that’s it. He'll tear through anyone that gets in his way to get it, with his bare hands, from the look of him.” A breath and then he smiles at her, familiarly charming. The curl of his hair is longer than their academy days, the braid gone, his jaw sharper. “And I am not the Empire. We’re not enemies, you and I."

That pain in her chest again, strangely akin to grief. "I know that."

He blinks, and then laughs again. "Then why are you here and not with your prince, on the other side of the battlefield?"

She feels her expression change. She’s not sure what it shows, or what he'll see in it - the words she chooses feel clumsy and inadequate. "I can't leave things to chance," she tries. "And I knew you wouldn't, either."

He'd stick an arrow between her shoulder blades the moment her back was turned, if he had to. He had too much to lose and not enough to trust, and she doesn't know how to change that. 

It's not enough.

She knows that.

She firms her mouth.

"Tell your troops to pull back.” She adjusts her grip on her sword. It twitches eagerly before her, its hilt blood-warm. “We want the same thing."

“Do we?” Claude muses, and his voice is almost soft.

He holds her gaze. He's grown into his shoulders, since she'd seen him last - broader, _older_ , he sits astride the wyvern with an easy confidence, but his eyes - they're the same as she remembers. Evergreen.

“Pull back your forces," she repeats.

His mouth twists.

"I'm sorry, my friend. But I can't do that."

She's expecting the first arrow. She steps into it, twisting so it glances off her right shoulder. It’s powerful enough to gouge a molten line across her armour and he uses the moment to kick his wyvern back into the sky, already preparing his bow.

She moves after him, flicking out her sword so its joints unspool around her and his second arrow grazes her thigh, searing a line through to skin. To stall her, not to kill, she notes distantly - she grits her teeth at the pain and follows her swing through. The sword of the creator unfurls, greedy, jubilant, and she sees Claude's eyes widen in a split second of surprise - before the sword bites into his wyvern's throat as it arches towards the sky.

The wyvern falters and lurches as if on a tether, the tip of the blade still sunk in its neck. Byleth braces herself, and pulls, and the beast lets out a choked note of pure pain as she wrenches the sword free, blood arcing out in a shower of hot rain. It careens back into the earth, wings beating out of time, useless. It subsides.

The sword of the creator folds itself back together, joints clicking like bloodied teeth. Byleth takes a deep breath, and then another. There is blood in her hair, cooling on her cheek. She wipes it away before it can seep into her eyes, and her hand trembles slightly - from adrenaline, she thinks, she tells herself - this- was necessary.

She sidesteps around the dying beast and looks for its rider.

Claude picks himself up from where he’d thrown himself clear, Failnaught clutched tightly in his hands.

"I'll admit," he says, and his voice is rough. "I didn't expect that." He lets Failnaught fall to the ground and draws his sword instead, feet shifting into an easy ready position. He favours his right side. His eyes flick towards his dying wyvern as the air bubbles from its slashed throat, and she sees a flash of regret, pain, before it’s hidden behind the savage smile he faces her with. "So be it."

She has only a moment to brace before he rushes her, growling a battle cry.

He is deft and controlled with his swings, and holds her off with more strength than a bowman should have. He baits her to take the offensive, yielding and giving up ground until she does and then he plies at her guard, utilising every trick he can think of and more besides. He almost trips her with a low sweep and she grins as she recovers her footing. He grins back. She feels - _alive_. Sweat sticks her hair to her brow. Her body hums to the line of the sword - and Claude’s expression is just the same, green eyes burning.

Her next blow slides past his defences and draws a line up his rib cage on his right side - not deep but long, broad enough to scar, and when he raises his sword to block her follow up, she sees him wince. It’s the opening she needed.

She shifts her stance and puts her weight behind the swing, pressing her advantage. He staggers, unable to push back and she uses that to force the sword from his hands, kicking it aside when it falls.

He sinks a dagger into her side for her trouble, managing to slip it through the soft join of her armour. She laughs despite the pain as she forces him away. He's fast. He's fast and he's prepared, but it's not enough, and they both know it.

“Yield,” she demands when she can, sword raised. Her pulse is in her ears; she feels herself smiling.

Claude faces her with only the bloodied dagger in his hand, the other pressed to his bleeding ribs, and there's that energy in his eyes - bright through the exhaustion, brilliant and burning.

His gaze flicks to his sword - too far to reach - to the sky (still clear) and then back to her.

He twitches the fingers of his dagger hand, inviting her forward with a crooked smile.

He almost manages to score a line up her cheek, dangerously close to her eye, before she wrestles the dagger from him and pins him to the floor.

He goes down heavy and yelps on impact. She straddles his chest and puts the blade to his jugular and he stills obediently, breathing hard. Her side burns, blood slicking hot and wet down to her abdomen. Poisoned, she realises with a jolt - and he grins up at her with his bloodied teeth. Despite herself, she laughs. He’s too clever by half.

It's over now, though.

She squeezes her knees into the sides of his ribs until she hears him wheeze and he raises his palms in surrender, letting his head sink back into the grass. The knife moves with his throat, a bead of sweat tracing the blade.

"I yield," he manages between breaths, and she smiles back, wild and fierce.

They remain like that awhile as they catch their breaths. In the ensuing stillness they hear the distant battle; the wind in the treetops, the crackle of fire. Eventually they hear a stir in the woods - horses, many of them - and they both turn at the approach, straining to see through the gloom.

When the short blast of a Kingdom horn follows, Byleth releases a breath she hadn’t realised she’d been holding. It’s Sylvain. Regrouping or retreating, it didn’t matter. This would soon be over.

She feels Claude move beneath her - laughing, maybe - and when she looks down he’s already watching her. His head is tilted back into the grass.

"What will you do now?” he asks. He licks his chapped lips, gaze flicking over her features, and then he smiles. “You have the leader of the Alliance, at your tender mercy.”

He has a scar like a star burst, she notices, notched beneath the curve of his jaw, just above where she holds the dagger. His pulse beats against the blade, strong and steady and alive and she wonders - she wonders if he thinks she’s going to kill him. If he would do the same, in her position.

They are not enemies, but they are not friends either. Not anymore.

“I don’t know,” is all that she says, before the first scout passes into the clearing and the war catches up with them once more.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> almost forgot, as always I hate titles and I wrote a lot of this to 'Yellow Bike' by Pedro the Lion - totally a Claude song...


	2. Garreg Mach, 1180

_Claude_ \- Garreg Mach, 1180 

-

Bird song in the trees. The monastery is muted in the fog, the torches that remain lit burning haloes against the morning dark - it's too early for sunrise, even in the mountains. Claude’s feet still find their way to the training grounds all the same.

It's one of those nights when he feels - restless, too big for his own skin. When he feels _himself_ too acutely: the shape of his hands, the fit of his teeth. There are too many possibilities and unanswered questions, the threads that he’s been following unravelling in his hands - and he won’t get any sleep, not like this.

And so in lieu of peace, he’s decided he'll take exhaustion. Better that than his room, and the waiting books that all managed to smell like the monastery, like damp stone and old silence, pages wilting between his fingers.

He walks to the training grounds, and he feels the weight of the low sky.

There’s a kind of comfort in that, he supposes. His mind spins, the world doesn’t; the world leans in, close and deaf and cold in a way that he couldn’t shake, in a way he still wasn’t used to. The rain sift through the thickness of the fog.

When he pushes the heavy doors of the training grounds open, the torches inside are already blazing.

There’s a familiar figure working through standard spear drills in the centre, a whirl of blue and reflected light. Claude stops, startled despite himself. And then he grins.

“Dimitri.”

The figure pauses mid-swing, cloak swinging forward to curl around his outstretched arm. Even this early (or late?) Dimitri is outfitted in full armour.

Claude finds his words and then his feet, putting a saunter in his step as he enters the room. “Burning the midnight oil, your highness?”

Dimitri bows his head and straightens, digging the butt of the spear into the sand. "Claude. I-” He pauses, and then clears his throat, his gaze flicks towards him. There’s always been something _forced_ about the way he maintains eye contact. “Not quite. I train here every morning, although I'm not surprised you haven't figured that out.” He puts on a smile. “You're never awake to see it.”

"You’ve got me there." Claude winks, plays pretend, and somehow the world feels a little slower. Their banter is familiar. "Technically it's not morning, though, is it?"

Dimitri's grip tightens on his lance but the smile remains in place, and that rigidity is familiar, too. “I… suppose. I woke up earlier than usual.” He tilts the spear towards Claude as he nears. “And yourself? Why are you awake?”

And that's the question.

Claude is close enough to see the exhaustion in Dimitri’s expression. His eyes are too bright, the line of his mouth tight despite the smile and Claude wonders- he wonders about a lot of things.

The rain has followed him into the courtyard. The cold wells up like groundwater, a living breathing thing - and sometimes Claude feels like his veins run with remembered sunlight; he misses the scorching heat of Almyran summers, the clarity of its evenings.

But in Dimitri, this cold has a root, a limb. He plants his feet and holds his spear like it’s an extension of himself, the weight of the fog shivering over him.

Claude thinks about birthrights. He thinks about legacy, history, and the damned thicket of questions that surrounds it all and he walks over to the training weapons rack and picks up two wooden swords.

He tosses one to Dimitri and the prince catches it on instinct, blinking at it as if he’s never seen one before. It makes Claude laugh.

“What would you say if I said I wanted to train?” he says, and gives the sword a few experimental swings. He feels disused muscles in his shoulders pull, and anticipates the burn to come. He hasn’t kept up his routines - Nader would have his head if he knew. 

Dimitri raises an eyebrow and it starts to crack the facade he’s been holding onto since Claude entered. “Really?”

“Really.” Claude grins at his disbelief, and if it’s savage, he’s not sure Dimitri will catch it. There’s tension at the back of his neck. Sunlight burns beneath his breath. “Perhaps I want to catch up for some of those late mornings.”

When Dimitri laughs this time, he could almost sound natural, and when he sways and moves, the line of his spear breaks. “That, at least is a noble aim.” 

He turns and he strides to one of the supporting pillars, placing his spear aside before experimentally hefting the sword. He catches Claude’s eye and raises an eyebrow.

“I’m not sure if I should trust it, though.”

Claude clicks his tongue against his teeth and smiles, stepping into the ready position Nader had once drilled into him. “You wound me, prince.”

Dimitri grins, an uneven slash of a smile, echoing his position with one of his own. “I’ll try not to. But I’m afraid I can’t make any promises.”

“Good,” Claude grins, and then he makes the first move.

\--

When Jeritza shoulders the heavy doors aside an hour later, greeting them with a familiar scowl, they're exhausted and barely upright, their wooden swords splintering in their hands. But they’re smiling. Claude's is bright and Dimiti’s is faint, just a curl at the corners of his lips.

It reaches the corners of his eyes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Promise not leaving the last one on a cliffhanger - this interlude is very relevant to our interests, and next chapter is also claude and, intense
> 
> Also fuck brexit -peaces out-
> 
> Btw I wrote a pwp kastle after the 2016 referendum if you need a reprieve from shitty populist politics


	3. The Mad Prince

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Why follow a mad prince?" Claude had laughed, bright-eyed and as sharp as the arrow he trained on her.

Gronder Field, 1185

Claude looks up at Byleth silhouetted against the blue of the sky, his pulse pounding against the shape of the knife at his throat. He resists the urge to swallow. He resists the urge to press upwards, to test her grip - it’s his own dagger, after all.

She holds his gaze, sweat and blood sticking her hair to her cheeks, a strand caught on her lower lip.

She’s hesitating, and he’d give - more than he thought he was capable of giving, to know what she’s thinking.

There aren’t many options. She could let him go - grant him passage back to the bulk of his army and maybe, maybe he would just leave it at that. He could pull back to Derdriu to lick his wounds and let the chips fall as they may; especially now that he knew, without a doubt, that the woman he had once known was at the helm of the Faerghus army.

But she was right - he wouldn’t take that risk, and he knows that she won’t either.

He wonders what she thinks about what has to come next.

There is a hiss as Ardeshir finally falls still beside them. He swallows against the rise of pain and grief- he had miscalculated, friend, and he’s sorry for it - but this had all been a gamble to begin with. He has played his hand.

The first rider enters the clearing.

"Byleth," he says, testing the shape of her name, and her gaze flicks to his mouth, and then back to his eyes.

The scouts find them first. And then Sylvain, with a bright slash of a grin against the soot and the sweat and blast marks on his armour and then the woods are filled with the clatter of equipment and horses, low voices filtering between the trees. The Faerghus vanguard is on the move - retreating _away_ from the Alliance lines, he notes, and he’s not sure whether it’s the surprise or the pain that makes him dizzy when Byleth finally releases him to pull him upright.

He wheezes out a breath as he finds his feet, wrapping his good arm around his ribs. The sword slash she’d gifted him is bleeding between his fingers. He’ll have a bruise if not broken ribs from his fall as well, if the vice-like pain when he breathes is any indication; he’ll play his part well, at least.

"Professor!” Sylvain's tone is practised, carefree to a fault, as he pulls up before them, his horse snorting and shying when it passes Ardeshir's body. He is taller than five years ago but all the more the same for it: the sharp gaze, the beguiling smile. “Heard you caught trouble. Need a hand?"

The clearing fills quickly, a loose ring of horsemen circling closer, and Claude can feel the pressure of the arrows training on him like a breath up the back of his neck.

“I'll admit, I’ve been called worse,” he says, and Byleth’s gaze flicks towards him, amused.

"Claude. It's been a while." Sylvain’s smile is bright and all teeth. "Imagine, meeting you here."

“Sylvain,” Byleth says, at length.

The hand she’d offered to pull Claude up is on his shoulder, almost close enough to his neck to collar him. She seems paler now that the flush of the fight has left her, though - unsteadier, her grip on him as much to hold herself up - and he watches the way she blinks the sweat from her eyes.

The sword of the creator lies a little way off, at her feet. If he could breathe without wincing, he’d wonder if he could make it to it.

"He's coming with us," she tells Sylvain, and her voice remains steady.

Sylvain blinks and then nods, effortlessly acknowledging her lead. He gestures to a few of his soldiers to dismount - and there's an easy trust there that Claude recognises, that he remembers from their days at the academy. It takes him a split second more to realise that he's actually _envious_ of it. 

The circle around them tightens, a horse bridal jangling just behind his left shoulder. Claude's watches Byleth. He looks for the slow dip of her blink, the weight of her eyelashes

“We'll need horses," she says.

"We have the spares, unfortunately," Sylvain says with a grimace, and gives another gesture. There's movement in the trees. "But we don't have much time. Felix is covering the retreat, but the latest from the scouts is that they’re pressed hard." Sylvain's smile includes Claude this time. "Are you good to go?"

Byleth's eyes slide to Claude's again and hold his gaze. He feels the weight of it. He feels the thump of his heart in his breast, the warmth of his pulse under his fingers. The grass bruises beneath the hooves of the clustered cavalry. Ardeshir’s broken form lies dark and still in the corner of his eye.

The decisions that had brought them to this point had already been made, though. All that remains is follow-through, and so he winks, and watches as the serious planes of her expression shifts.

Her eyes are as green and open as he's ever seen them

"Yes," she says, answering Sylvain, and the circle closes.

-

What comes next happens quickly.

Byleth takes a last long look at the dagger before throwing it into the underbrush. She takes Failnaught and the Sword of the Creator and swings herself onto the horse she’s given, settling into the saddle and swigging an antidote with deceptive ease.

Claude is frisked, disarmed, bound and helped up onto Sylvain’s spare horse. The knight pulls himself up behind him, forcing him against the front of the saddle and squashing them both, and it feels as awkward and ridiculous as it must look.

Sylvain’s laughter is warm against the back of his head as he reaches around him for the reins. He brings him back securely against his oh-so-comfortable chest plate, slinging a casual arm around his waist.

“Some reunion, right?”

Claude laughs, even as the world dips and sways. “You tell me.”

He feels like his ribs are creaking. Byleth had pressed white magic into his shoulders before the soldiers had taken him from her, a chill touch through the splits in his shirt, and it was enough to stem the bleeding, but his chest still aches. His _heart_ aches, and it lurches as they jolt into motion, the horse snorting under the additional weight.

There’s a sigh behind him and he could almost believe the emotion in it.

“Who’d have thought that it would come to this?” Sylvain murmurs, almost to himself, and there is nothing that Claude can say to that.

-

They make it back to the battlefield ahead of the pursuing Alliance.

Claude catches movement, shadows, above them. Wyvern riders, some in colours he recognises, wheel and engage through the plumes of smoke, and the kingdom cavalry ignores it, skirting the smouldering central fortifications in its press for the western side. Claude bites the inside of his lip and sends what might be a prayer, a fervent wish, to the ones following. He focuses on remaining upright.

The messengers find them as they pick their way through the ruin of earlier battles and bring news of an exhausting Imperial army, of Kingdom successes, and the horses’ speed picks up with each one.

When they reach the front lines, it's already over.

The battlefield before them is emptying. Stragglers scatter the plain, moving between bodies to help the wounded or check the dead and the carrion birds circle, watching, waiting. There are fires here, too: broken carts and artillery, burning where they were abandoned.

One of Sylvain’s scouts blows a quick horn blast and an answering call comes from the Kingdom forces, where they regroup at the edge of the field closest to them.

There are only Kingdom and Imperial banners among the dead (for now). and Claude’s next breath is lighter for it.

Scouts ride out to meet them and information is exchanged, and it’s decided that a smaller entourage will make their way to the tents being erected in the centre of the Faerghus encampment, Claude in tow.

And then his royal highness Dimitri Blaiddyd staggers back onto the field.

He feels it when Sylvain straightens behind him. He feels Byleth move forward, move closer, tightly reining her horse- and then he can only see _Dimitri_.

His lone eye is wide, wild. Areadbhar smoulders with a hungry fire as he reaches with it - an extension of limb - and he hacks through a barely standing Imperial soldier that has strayed into his path, deaf or impervious to her pleas. She crumples without the breath to scream. Dimitri moves on. And then Claude is moving, too - Sylvain spurs the horse forward, Byleth advancing alongside.

Dimitri is almost unrecognisable beneath the mud and the blood. He jerks his head up as they approach, his lips peeled back in a snarl- and when they’re closer, Claude realises he’s speaking, his voice too low and broken to make out the words.

His gaze glances over them, bloodshot and startling blue. He doesn’t seem to see them. He makes to take a step forward, stumbles, and falls heavily to his knees, catching himself with Areadbhar. The ember of the relic catches the wide whites of his eye. His breaths shudder like a physical thing.

“Dimitri,” Byleth says, and her voice is different from anything Claude’s ever known of her.

“Rodrigue-” Dimitri manages, in the slew of endless, half-formed words. “Not- not again, again, _again_ -”

This is not how Claude had imagined seeing Dimitri again: bloody and rumpled on someone else’s horse, tied to the pommel like a lamb for slaughter.

This was not how he’d imagined seeing _Dimitri_.

Byleth slips from her horse and staggers, tripping over a weapon underfoot. She approaches Dimitri slowly. Cautiously. Claude takes the reins that Sylvain presses against his bound hands and then Sylvain follows.

“Dimitri,” Sylvain calls, pitching his voice low. “Hey, Dimitri, it’s over.”

Dimitri twitches his head to the side, as if listening to something else, before his eye rolls and finds Sylvain. 

“Not- while the witch lives,” he growls out, and the words are gravelled and raw.

His eye slides closed and another shudder runs through him, taut with pain, and then Byleth is at his side, white magic alight in her hands once more. Claude thinks he sees them tremble.

Sylvain crouches in front of the prince, blocking him from view, and carefully, gently, reaches for his shoulder.

“Edelgard is gone, Dimitri.”

Claude had known- or rather he’d heard, attempted to substantiate, the rumours. The stories of murdered Imperial officials, their corpses shattered and tortured, pieced apart beyond recognition. He’d heard about what remained of the prince, after the five long years of loss and exile and war- 

But to see him now was like seeing a ghost. A twisted after image, like the inverse shadows that paint the backs of your eyes after a light goes out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> next up: a negotiation of terms  
> (which was supposed to be the title of this chapter but WHOOPS we didn't quite reach it...
> 
> and oh man this uh this got sad, shoulda expected that - but soon the ROMP WILL CONTINUE
> 
> Wondering if flash back would work better after this...? idK


	4. A Negotiation of Terms

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Song for Dimitri in this verse - definitely [Shearwater's Leviathan, Bound](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FTyo7hCzn0M)

The reins are in Claude's hands.

He wraps his fingers around them. He looks to the west, towards the haze of smoke and kicked up dust where the vanguard of the Alliance were advancing - his thoughts are reeling, spinning, his plans stacked like matchsticks. He thinks-

And he leans in and squeezes the horse into motion.

\--

He gets all of two strides before a kingdom soldier grabs at the horse's bridle and Claude slides right out of the saddle, hitting the dirt like a sack of potatoes.

\--

Byleth sees when Dimitri's gaze catches the movement. He lurches forward like a sight hound, wrenching from her grip and almost dodging Sylvain and her chest tightens, aches, as she recognises how he switches his grip.

(She's seen him throw Areadbhar like a javelin, the spines flexing as it tears through armour, through man, through beast-)

"Dimitri," she says firmly, catching his spear arm and forcing his arm down. His head snaps towards her, lips curled back over his teeth, but he does pause- long enough for his momentum to break.

She sees over his shoulder as Claude's opportunistic escape attempt ends in a mouthful of dirt.

She doesn't understand what Claude thought he'd achieve. She doesn't understand _any_ of this - she understands how to fight, how to _win_ , but there's a voice in her thoughts that's not quite hers, that places names and faces to the enemies she sees and instead of necessity and war, there’s-

There are ghosts on the field, dead by her hand. There are her friends, dead in her memory and more besides and maybe she _could_ understand Dimitri, she thinks, as she sees his gaze once again slide to empty space.

Sylvain steps between Dimitri and where Claude struggles with guard and horse, and he’s no longer pretending to smile.

“Dimitri,” Sylvain says, voice low, hands hovering over Dimitri’s grip on Areadbhar. “Look at me. Talk to _me_ -”

She shakes her numbing fingers and forces magic into them as she reaches for Dimitri's shoulders, to hold as much as to heal. Dimitri flinches, recoiling. He looks at her as if only just remembering she's within his guard, his single eye wide - and she's not sure which Dimitri she’s seeing.

There’s a thudding of hooves as riders close in from the Kingdom camp and the focus shifts. Red hair, old but well-cared for armour. A braid that’s blown forward across his cheek, helmet under an arm. _Gilbert_ , she realises, and her relief is immediate. 

“Your Majesty-” the Knight starts, sliding off his horse before it’s fully stopped with more agility than a man his age should have - in full armour, no less. “Your Majesty, are you-”

Areadbhar flexes warningly as Dimitri growls and shrugs out of their grip, staggering a painful step. “Stay- back,” he manages, and Sylvain blinks before he finally rolls back on his heels, palms raising.

Byleth rises in turn, and almost staggers as a wash of dizziness catches up with her. Her vision sparks, like the fringes of time are unravelling and she presses her fingers to her temples, pushing her sweat-damp hair back from her forehead. She presses down. Not now. She can’t afford this weakness now.

“Your Majesty,” Gilbert says again, drawing to his side. He takes Sylvain's place, as naturally as breathing, and something about that conjures a sour taste in Byleth’s mouth. “You are injured. Please-”

"Not over," Dimitri manages.

Byleth feels that catch in her chest like grief, like a cracked rib.

"There's nothing left to fight," she hears herself saying. "The Empire has retreated. And the Alliance-"

"They still come." Dimitri’s smile is bloodied and too wide, despite the pain that twists it into a snarl. "Let them."

Claude has been brought back to the circle around the prince, his clothes further torn and rumpled and his collar pulled apart to his collarbone. His eyes are dark and sharp as he follows the conversation.

She tries again to find the words to express what she knows, what she hopes he’ll see, but her mouth, her tongue, doesn’t quite feel her own.

"Claude has surrendered, Dimitri,” Sylvain says, instead. “The alliance will negotiate terms. Further bloodshed is _pointless-"_

"It's all pointless." Dimitri's laugh is cracked, an intake of breath. “If they want blood, they can _take it_ and maybe, maybe that will sate the dead-”

"...your highness." Gilbert stands at his flank, an extension of limb, looking down at him with quiet, sad eyes and a resignation that makes Byleth’s exhausted heart pulse in _anger_.

Dimitri isn’t finished: "Alliance, empire, kingdom, what does it matter - we bleed and we die and _she_ lives _, she_ , she-"

"Gilbert,” she chokes out. “Rodrigue, where is Rodrigue? If he could talk to him, then maybe-”

Gilbert tilts his greying head up to look at her, pain in his cold, green eyes. “Count Fraldarius is dead.”

Sylvain reels back as if struck. Dimitri’s diatribe breaks on a keen, the sound of it like a wounded animal, and Byleth moves towards him, staggering over the torn up mud and reaching out. He shrugs her hand away again.

“Your highness,” comes Claude’s voice. She looks up at him over Dimitri’s shoulder, blinking away the sweat that drips into her eyes. His expression is carefully neutral. It's her that he's watching, she realises, his green eyes on her even as he addresses Dimitri - but they fall away before she can meet his eye. “ _Dimitri_.” He holds the name in his mouth a moment too long. “If I may.”

One of the guards holding his arms tugs him back, sharply, but Byleth raises a hand, staying the violence. Her movements feel leaden.

"We were friends once, weren’t we? You and I.”

Byleth laughs. They were all friends, once. A blink of an eye ago - but the sentiment, from Claude, seems superficial, now. It’s more like... he’s biding for time.

But the thought slips as she tries to think on it, about the reasons _why_ \- slips like her grasp on her weak, fluttering magic. She can’t _concentrate_. She can’t- 

Maybe she should try this again. Maybe if she’s faster - if Rodrigue - she could-

She secures her trembling fingers in the ragged edges of time, pushing even as it disintegrated in her fingers but it feels different this time, when even that fades away from her.

The sky tips, the ground wavering beneath her feet and _oh_ , she thinks, moving with it, _so that is what it is_.

Her hand falls to the slash in her armour, the space of smooth, burning skin, resistant to the cure-all antidote she’d chugged earlier.

She should’ve... known...

She feels the impact of her knees hitting the ground. Her hands fall into - something soft, something damp, a blur of blue through the blur of her vision. There are hands on her shoulders, she thinks. A wash of sound, colour, spinning into one and she’s-

-underwater.

A rushing, whirling dizziness.

And then sound and light blinks out.

-

She remembers:

A hand on her neck, fingers fumbling at her pulse. 

A pounding in her head, like fists on a locked door, hammering to get in or out she doesn’t know- and there’s a brush of cold, dampness, the smell of old stone and the stale air of a tomb. A brush of magic eases over her cheeks like a breath, a kiss on her brow and then she’s… sinking again...

she...

...pieces together a thought:

_where am…?_

The hand is gone.

She sleeps, once more.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am... so very sorry for how late this is. I've had this half practically finished - for a long while, and as I'm digging back into fire emblem, I wanted to finally get the ball rolling again.  
> There are two halves to this chapter, and it's back on my plate. We actually get to meet the rest of the blue lions, and then the _true_ shenanigans ensue.
> 
> Oh, Dimitri.


End file.
